Sugarcane mosaic virus infects Stenotaphrum secundatum in Australia

This study presents the first report of sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV) infecting Stenotaphrum secundatum (buffalo grass) in Australia, from a turf farm in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. The plant displayed mosaic symptoms and contained flexuous, filamentous virions of 700–750 × 10–11 nm typical of members of the genus Potyvirus. Infection of the sample by SCMV was confirmed by double antibody sandwich ELISA and RT-PCR amplification of the coat protein coding region of the viral genome. In a phylogenetic analysis, the buffalo grass isolate was sister to a clade of maize-infecting isolates of SCMV from eastern Africa and was 75.8% and 79.4% identical to the exemplar isolate of SCMV at nucleotide and amino acid levels, respectively.